That seems high to me as well. Obviously this is anecdotal, but I’ve introduced probably 20 friends/family members to VR and none of them have had issues with motion sickness.
Simulation sickness is real, and more common than most gamers (a population that tends to self-select for people without that trait) think. This prevalence doesn’t surprise me at all. It’s not severe for everyone. You might not notice if a friend had it, except that they might play fewer video games with you. (They might not, some people are fine unless in full VR.) People aren’t generally keen on going “You know that thing that you like doing and that I’ve seen 5-year-olds do on the internet? I can’t do it, it makes me vom.” It doesn’t exactly feel cool.
That’s a true statement. They might just be macho, or they might be just sparing your feelings about a really expensive device you own. I know it made me nauseous, but I didn’t say anything because my buddy was excited and spent a lot of money on it. It’s not like I have to play it forever… it’s just that one time.
Mine’s so bad I can’t even play FPSs without getting sick, but being very open about that means I hear from a lot of people with less severe systems who will power through their nausea for short sessions with friends to avoid embarassment, which is why I think the way I do.
I started by playing while standing and moving smoothly in game and I couldn’t last long before getting sick. Now I play seated with snapping in game movement and I can play for hours without issue. Depending on how you define it, I don’t think it’s surprising to see so many people say VR makes them sick.
The statistic quoted is for “users”, so presumably the measurement was made against randomly selected individuals of the general population (though the article frustratingly fails to cite a source). This is important because the effect is not evenly distributed among demographics, per the article:
What’s more, we don’t know why some people are so much more susceptible to it than others, but we know that there are numerous markers that make us more likely to experience it. Women, as mentioned previously, are more likely than men to get VR sick. Asian people are more likely than other ethnicities to experience motion sickness in general. Age is another factor—we’re more likely to experience it between the ages of 12 and 21 than in our adulthood… until we reach our 50s, upon which the likelihood increases again.
The problem is in a car, your body is actually moving and your sense of movement aligns with what your eyes are seeing. I’m not an expert but there’s something about fluid in your ears moving?
When it comes to gaming on a flat screen, your eyes are interpreting movement but you are not moving. This, from my understanding is what causes the motion sickness.
I can’t use these VR headsets because they make me sick and give me migraines. I’m just fine playing on a TV or monitor though.
Being in a car or aeroplane is totally different from playing a game, VR or otherwise. The motion sickness is a result of a mismatch between the sense of your own motion from what you are seeing, and the sense of your own motion from your inner-ear (which is basically an accelerometer).
In a car or an aeroplane, as long as you are looking at the window then there is no problem. (But often people get car-sick if they try to read a book or something, because then they can’t see the motion - they can only feel it.) But in a game, you can see the motion but not feel it - so that can also give motion sickness.
Many modern first-person games have an option for ‘mouse smoothing’ (or something similar), and that generally help reduce or eliminate motion sickness.
As much as I want VR to be awesome, I’ve had motion sickness from playing Portal while sitting at a desk. Consequently, I think this is just one of those technologies that I have to be happy for other people to enjoy.
Just FYI, I can’t play FPS games without puking, but VR games work for me. The fact that my inner ear matches what I’m seeing in the game makes the difference.
Beatsaber obviously, alyx, in death unchained, superhot. Some of the notable ones I can think of offhand. There’s a pretty wide variety of genres though, so depending on if you like action, puzzlers, etc is going to matter a lot. It’s also been a year since I’ve played due to lack of space.
40-70% and 80% for women sounds insanely high. I got a used HTC Vive to have beat saber parties with people and so far none out of about 20 people have experienced nausea even with heavy drinking.
Yeah, I would say there are definitely specific experiences you could make that make 80+% nauseous(I have pretty good VR legs but moving platforms can still disorient me). But a well designed VR game accounts for that, see something like Beat Saber.
This. There is a reason why I can play beatsaber without feeling anything. But instantly get sick when playing pistol whip. The level moving around me is just disorienting.
Women, as mentioned previously, are more likely than men to get VR sick. Asian people are more likely than other ethnicities to experience motion sickness in general.
It doesn’t make sense. Also, I can’t see any scientific evidence or sources that underpins this article mentioned. It’s kinda racist, in a sense.
This proved to be a fact. My apologies.
You’ve got to get used to using new technologies. When iPhone was first introduced, people confused that there’s no button to control things in the screen. The same thing is happening here.
I get sick playing 1st person shooters. Like thief back in the day. Not even in a headset…literally sitting there. So it’s not about getting used to technologies.
I’m honestly curious about the science behind why VR makes some people motion sick. My first time using VR I never got motion sick once and never have since then. And my sister on the other hand got motion sick instantly when she tried it.
Edit: Fixed my atrocious spelling, must’ve been high or something.
I’m just as surprised when people say they don’t get it. Locomotion is the thing that makes me sick. 1:1 room scale walking? No prob. Teleporting, cool. Joystick movement? Taking a ride on the Vomit express.
The science is vestibular mismatch and your personal sensitivity to it. There are plenty of options for VR activities with no mis-matched movement. And there are plenty of people that can handle a mismatch without any problems.
Basically your inner ear and your eyes are disagreeing about what is happening, and historically when that happened to humans, it was because they ate the poisonous berries. So eventually the people who randomly had the gene where that mismatch leads to throwing up were more likely to live to procreate.
But the brain can be trained, if you are susceptible to VR sickness, play until you start to feel the first minimal symptoms (varies per person, but commonly; warm face, inexplicably sweaty face, or mild dizziness) then immediately take a break. As you continue to do so successfully you’ll notice the response takes longer to come into play and is milder when it does. And if “the berries” keep not killing you, your brain will assume you know what you are doing and don’t need to be protected. But every time it does get too bad, or worse does lead to throwing up, it will reinforce that your brain saved you and it will start coming on more quickly and strongly. Still totally reversible, but best to avoid it if possible.
There are some people who don’t have the response to start with, in my experience it has a surprisingly strong corellation to people with autism, which was nice for us autistics in early VR. We had the whole place to ourselves, hehe. But hopefully we never have to actually worry about poison berries.
Damn thats really interesting. I don’t have autism myself but have never had issues with VR at any point so I guess I’m just lucky. Apreciate the write up!
First person shooters already make some people feel nauseous. It’s the disconnect between your vision telling you that you’re moving while everything else, especially your balance centers, saying you’re not.
VR kinda makes it even worse if you’re not on some 2D treadmill
I can spend hours doing VR, prefer standing but some games are sitting. High paced jumping/spinning/flipping games. Elite dangerous, Sorento (sp), robo recall, windlands. No issue of sickness at any point, even with fps drops and frame hangs
Good for you, I could do all that on a ship out at sea using a laptop with a 1070 and a wired headsetand and could also not get sick.
Doesn’t change the fact that literally like half the people I ever tried to introduce to VR have immediately felt violently sick to their stomach within minutes and some did try to get over it. With multiple attempts.
I’m young and have played computer games since childhood, I never bought a VR headset cause anything more than 20 minutes and I feel dizzy as fuck.
VR needs an overhaul for me to actually buy into it, I honestly just think the headsets aren’t going to work, I don’t think a higher refresh rate will fix this
I’m not sold on the gaming side of it but I loved my quest for movies. I’m planning to buy another one one day and it’s something that I’ll consider essential for old age retirement.
I only play standing games that stick within the confines of room scale, that way all my movements are natural.
When I play other games, it’s teleport or nothing, no other locomotion form works for my, my sense of balance is to sensitive, and I haven’t had the time to work to get used to it… and swinging on vines is way out no.
Curiously I also get severe motion sickness when I drive go karts, but not when I drive cars. Although, sitting in the passenger seat, especially the rear seats, however can be a problem sometimes if I’m going around windy roads)
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